There were no consignment stores but plenty of shipping services. We counted 14 shipping related booths out of 85 total booths.

At 6 pm, the doors to the Gala opened and we ran into the room greeted by eBay employees with their hands out like a youth sports team saying “good game”. It was a nice gesture.

Chris Isaak came out at 8:00pm wearing a red rhinestone suit. He’s riveting! He’s one of those people that you just can’t take your eyes off of. Wikipedia says he is 52, but he looks 42, 45 tops.

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Back to business -> There are a lot of changes in store for the eBay platform such as constant tweaking with listing requirements (shipping) and active content policy. This will weed out the solutions providers who don’t have the cash nor energy to keep up.

Developing applications for eBay this year has been a game of whack-a-mole. Digital delivery for all categories. Whack. No digital delivery. Whack again. New policy violations. Whack. Random API errors. Whack Whack.

Now there are mandatory shipping, handling time, and return policy requirements. Then active widget approvals. The moles are breeding at an alarming rate.

A few years back, the high spending solutions providers really bugged me. Spending someone else’s money to buy customers is a completely different philosophy from spending your own money. Well, most of those guys are gone, and the frugal are still around. Frugal is what making money on eBay is all about.